Cuba recently launched its own answer to Windows this week, or, in the bigger picture, what the Cubans are calling "US Hegemony." Nova, the new open source OS being offered by the Cuban government, is being made to boot out US-based Microsoft products.

Pause for a few minutes while shills retort that they need this or that feature in Office/Photoshop/Publisher/Quark whatever....

By "shills," I take it that you mean "anyone who uses their computer for actual productive, paying work"?

Applications are almost always disposable, they can easily be replaced.....

Ah yes, the 'ol OSS bait-and-switch. I think I know how this goes:

1) Engage in self-righteous posturing about how proprietary software (and anyone who uses it) is somehow evil/immoral/kills kittens/etc.
2) When someone is gullible enough to fall for that, point them to open source "alternatives."
3) Wait for the user to inevitably complain that the so-called "alternative" is missing features (or is just plain broken) compared to the (evil/immoral/Satan-spawn) proprietary software they had been using.
4) Mock the user's naiveté for expecting open source applications to be polished, functional, or stable. Or just resort to the standard OSS buck-passing tactic: "it's open source, just download the code, spend 3 or 4 years learning how to program - and fix the problem yourself. Duh!"
5) ....?
6) PROFIT!!!*

(*that is, profit for the makers of the proprietary software that the user goes back to - after they get tired of the OSS "blame the user" mentality.)